Rosh Yeshivat Maharat

We have seen that the Yerushalmi and the Bavli seemed to use the phrase ברכות מעכבות (that the omission of the blessings does or does not impact the Shema or the other blessings) to refer to different questions. The Yerushlmi appeared to refer only to the question of the berachot and Shema while the Bavli seemed to deal only with the question of the berachot  in relation to each other. We noted a difficult question of Tosafot who compared those very two texts on the assumption that they are talking about the same topic. What emerged was that when one says ברכות אינן מעכבות את שמע (the omission of the blessings does not stand in the way of the fulfillment of the Shema) one could mean that these two berachot are not only distinct from the Shema but also operate apart from one another.

The claim that recitation of the berachot is not linked directly to the Shema basically indicates that they are not ברכות המצוה (mitzvah blessings) but standard ברכות שבח (blessings of praise) that happen to be situated before the Shema. If a person skipped one of the ברכות השחר (the morning blessings), there would be no reason to think that any of the other berachot are impacted¹. What I would like to show is how this debate appears after the Tosafot, in the 13th century Rishonim in Sefarad — the Ramban and the Rashba — and how that appearance deepens our understanding of this entire unit of the Siddur. …

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